Want To See A $13,000 NES? So Does This Guy On Storage Wars

In case you're not familiar with basic-cable reality shows, A&E's Storage Wars follows several people who make a living buying and reselling stuff they buy from auctions. The gimmick is that they're bidding on the contents of storage units, without really knowing what they contain. In a recent episode, one of the series' regulars pulls a grubby NES out of his newly acquired stash and immediately sees dollar signs. Maybe a little prematurely, as it turns out.

Visit A&E's site to stream the video and see the hilarity for yourself. There's a bunch of other boring crap in the episode, so here's what you need to see for maximum effectiveness:

3:30—We're introduced to Mark Balelo. He has a shiny shirt and his own theme song. He's also a real-life Ted DiBiase, as demonstrated by his fat stack of cash.

14:00—Now comes the good part: Mark digs through piles of garbage for treasure. What's this? Why, it's an NES. To the untrained eye, it doesn't look like anything special. Maybe that's why we don't have our own theme song. Here's what he has to say about his major score: "NES-001, guys. I want you to look at this very carefully. This is the first Nintendo DS built. The last one was sold with five games in the Internet for $13,000."

He's referring to an eBay auction from last year where an NES and five games did sell for about that amount. The thing is, the auction hit that price because of the scarcity of one of the games, not the NES itself.

18:30—It all builds up to this. Enjoy.

If you like this sort of thing, be sure to check out a similarly cringe-worthy episode of Pawn Stars, featuring a man, a Halo costume, and crushing disappointment.